Meade feared that he was about to be arrested for something, though he could not imagine what he had done wrong.  

The officer, Colonel James A. Hardie, had been sent from army headquarters in Washington, D.C., to Frederick, Maryland, where Meade was camped along with much of the rest of the Army of the Potomac. Hardie quickly got down to business. “General,” he said to Meade, “I’m afraid I’ve come to make trouble for you.”

Jolted, Meade received the letter Hardie was carrying. It was from General Henry W. Halleck, the commanding general of the Union army. A wave of shock must have passed over Meade as he read the first sentence: “You will receive with this the order of the President placing you in command of the Army of the Potomac.” 

Meade received this surprising news on June 28, 1863, 146 years ago today.

 Meade was not shocked that the current commander of the army, Major General Joseph Hooker, was being replaced. Hooker had botched the army’s last battle, at Chancellorsville, Virginia, against Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Though he had boldly declared before that battle that “the enemy is in my power, and God Almighty cannot deprive me of them,” Hooker had been thoroughly outfoxed by Lee. After the defeat, the Army of the Potomac had limped away, having lost yet another battle in a string of defeats that stretched back over a year. The army returned to its camp in Falmouth, Virginia, while "Fighting Joe" Hooker tried to figure out what to do.* 

In the wake of Chancellorsville, several of Hooker’s top officers grumbled about him—grumbles that revealed a cancerous lack of confidence in the commander. The same kind of inept leadership in battle followed by subordinates’ complaints, had followed the army’s defeat at Fredericksburg the previous December. Hooker, himself, had been one of the chief attackers back then, and had been given command of the army despite that insubordination. 

Meade, an honorable officer, had not been one of those who groused about Hooker. But he had detected a whiff of change in the air and had concluded that Hooker would not be long for the command. On June 25, in a letter to his beloved wife Margaretta, he had ticked off several reasons why, should that happen, he would not be the general chosen for the job. One of those reasons, Meade wrote, was that he had “no friends, political or others, who press or advance my claims or pretensions.”

In that, however, he was mistaken. Major General John Reynolds was the most senior general in the Army of the Potomac and the probable next in line of command after Hooker. Earlier in June, though, Reynolds had traveled quietly to Washington to inform his superiors that he had no interest in command. At the same time, he recommended Meade—like him, a Pennsylvanian. That recommendation, Meade's experience and strong record in battle, and, perhaps, the very fact that he had not maneuvered for the job, convinced Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and General Halleck to tap him for the post.

And so Meade was handed a heavy responsibility. Diffidently—or alarmed—Meade tried to reject the command. Colonel Hardie responded that such an action was out of the question.  

Meade stumped off to General Hooker’s tent to explain the change, perhaps with some embarrassment. Hooker took the news with aplomb and brought Meade up to date. Meade had known that Lee’s army had marched north. Briefed by Hooker, he learned, to his dismay, that Lee’s Confederates had reached south-central Pennsylvania, where they threatened the capital, Harrisburg, and the cities of Lancaster and York. In that area, they could also seize control of a rail line that connected Baltimore and Washington, D.C., to the Midwest, isolating the capital.  

The Army of the Potomac, meanwhile, had only begun moving north from Virginia a few days before. Its various divisions were moving north on several different roads. When he saw the position of his army, Meade observed, soberly, that it was “rather scattered.”  

Meade was in command of some 90,000 men. Lee had about 75,000. 

That first day, Meade determined to continue the move north balancing two goals. He wanted to keep the army’s left and right edges as far apart as possible to contact Lee wherever his troops might be while at the same time maintain his units in enough proximity that they could quickly converge on whatever spot that contact occurred. He informed Halleck that he would find and fight Lee. He ordered his army north, telling them “strong exertions are required.”  

A couple of days later, Meade confided to his wife his growing sense of the burden he carried. He felt, he said, “much oppressed with a sense of responsibility and the magnitude of the great interests intrusted (sic) to me.” As he settled in, Meade issued no stirring call to arms to his troops. He informed his top commanders of the dangers posed by Lee’s presence in Pennsylvania. He noted his high opinion of the army, which had “fought well heretofore” and his estimation that they would fight “more desperately and more bravely than ever” in the coming test.  

That test would come far more quickly than Meade could wish.

On July 1, 1863, General Harry Heth’s Confederates marched toward the town of Gettysburg, where, they had heard, they could seize some badly needed shoes. Before reaching the town, they ran into two brigades of Union cavalry determined to slow them down. Three days after George Gordon Meade was handed command of the Army of the Potomac, the Battle of Gettysburg was on.   

* Hooker precipitated his own dismissal. His relations with Halleck and others in Washington turned frosty after Chancellorsville, and the combination of his lack of movement; his requests for reinforcements; his idea of attacking Richmond, the Confederate capital, after Lee moved north, rather than going after Lee's army; and his complaints about the need to keep troops stationed in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, all alienated Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck. Hooker, meanwhile, felt that he was not being properly supported and grew disenchanted. Lincoln felt that Lee's invasion of the north provided the Union with a tremendous opportunity. "We cannot help beating [Lee]," he wrote a close advisor, "if we have the man." As June wore on, he became convinced that Hooker was not “the man.” On June 27, Hooker’s own frustration boiled over. He dashed off a telegram asking to be relieved of command. Lincoln quickly took him up on it.

Words © 2009 AtHome Pilgrim

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